Chrome 55 was released for the desktop a few days ago, and now the Android version has followed suit. If you've been using Chrome 55 beta, most of this should already be familiar, but there are a few new changes in store as well.

Saving pages for offline use is as easy as pressing the download button in the Chrome menu, and they will remain on your device until you manually delete them. You can also easily download HTML5 video and audio by a new button on the player controls, as long as the site hasn't implemented custom controls and the content is not a stream.

Performance/memory improvements

Memory consumption on low-memory devices, Chrome 54 vs. 55

Chrome's sandboxing feature, which isolates every tab and extension in a separate system process, inevitably leads to the browser eating up memory. Chrome 55 on Android includes some of the performance improvements from recent Chrome desktop releases, including optimizations to V8 (Chrome's JavaScript engine).

The full explanation is rather technical, but two changes are important. Firstly, V8 changes how JavaScript garbage collection works based on how many active elements are on the current pages. This, combined with more aggressive memory compaction, shows a 50% average drop in memory usage.

Secondly, V8 in Chrome 55 has a number of improvements to zones - the way V8 allocates memory. In previous versions, V8's background parser (the process that runs scripts while pages load) would keep zones alive long after the scripts were done loading. Now, the zones are immediately freed from memory once the scripts are finished, reducing overall memory usage.

There are a few other changes yielding minimal improvements, but those are the most important one. The enhanced garbage collection will only be enabled on devices with under 512MB of RAM, but the zone improvements are available on all devices.

Web sharing

Chrome 55 supports the new Web Share API, which webpages can use to directly share content with apps installed on your device. This means websites can implement their own Share button, which would work exactly like the share button on native Android applications.

However, this API is very much in the early stages. It is only available as an Origin Trial, which means sites have to opt-in to having this feature enabled until the API is complete. To prevent malicious pages tricking the user, only HTTPS links can be shared and can only be triggered via a user gesture (like pressing a button).

Developer features

Chrome 55 not only brings the above changes for end users, but also a host of new abilities that web developers can take advantage of. Here are the most noteworthy additions.

Input handling improvements: Chrome 55 adds support for PointerEvents, which webpages can use instead of the older MouseEvent and TouchEvent APIs. PointerEvents are designed with both touch and mouse movements in mind, leading to less of a headache for developers and better page responsiveness for users.

CSS automatic hyphenation: New to Chrome 55 on Mac and Android, developers can now set boxes of text to automatically hyphenate when line-wrapping with simple CSS (more info).

Persistent storage: This allows web apps to locally store data and ensure it will not be automatically deleted. The user has to accept it (much like for granting access to your location/camera), or it is automatically granted if certain conditions are met. The conditions include high site engagement, being added to the home screen, or if push notifications are already enabled (more info here).

APK Download

The APK is signed by Google and upgrades your existing app. The cryptographic signature guarantees that the file is safe to install and was not tampered with in any way.

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Albert

Can someone please explain to me why Chrome is janky on my s7e whereas the stock Samsung browser is fluid? Scrolling is a nightmare. The only reason I still have this pathetic app installed is because of password sync. Dadgum it, Google!

anees

As far as I know its not optimised for snapdragon devices and is for x86. Try yubrowser from Google play or tuga from xda they are basically chrome but optimised for snapdragon and the performance difference is significant.

Albert

Thanks for the suggestions. I don't suppose they support Chrome password sync, do they?

anees

Yh they do hence I use it as my daily browser on my on my phone. It does take a little while to get the chrome sync to work though

someone755

Any source on this?
I know the Play Store version of Chrome isn't made with Snapdragon-specific optimizations in mind, but I never would have thought that it would default to x86 (considering arm having been, and now arm64 being the majority).

That's the one i used and it mentions its snapdragon optimised and Ive been using it for months and I have noticed a significant improvement in performance

someone755

I meant the source for your claim that Google's Chrome apk is x86 optimized. I know there are tons of Chromium builds online for various chipset configurations.

TedPhillips

chrome is so well optimized for x86 because of desktop computers, etc.

as for 'proof' look to in-depth reviews of the early zen phones (that were intel soc based) with a relatively weak soc, they could punch well above their class in the browser benchmarks.

that said, i would still pick an arm powered device pretty much everytime. strength of the ecosystem is key.

Макаров Илья

Thx, works fast as f!

Simon

I just tried both. They're great, much faster than Chrome + you get to keep the chrome features. For now they both seem pretty similar but I prefer Tuga because it can play youtube in the background (yubrowser probably can't because it's in the playstore). Which one do you think is better and why? I only used them for a day so I have low experience with them.

anees

Yubrowser only because that was the first one I downloaded and the chrome sync worked and for me tuga chrome sync didn't worm and they both seemed identicle. Plus yubrowser has the benefit to be auto updated from the play store.

Atoqir

Install adguard (not available in the Play Store).

It blocks ads and solves performance immediatly

Albert

Will look into it. Thanks a lot.

MikeOxlong

Odd, I've never had janky chrome on my nexus devices ever since the n5. Must be a scamscum thing...

Albert

True that. My 2-year old One m8 handles Chrome (and some Google apps) way better than my Samsung. So much for a flagship.

Pavel Shevchuk

I don't have S7 on tap, but Samsung Browser on S6 doesn't use Chrome/System WebView and runs older version of Chromium engine

nside1

Bottom nav?

mohit

Chrome's download manager is very inconsistent. When you download a file, sometimes it is downloaded by chrome's download manager and sometimes by android downloads application. I have to look at both after completion of download.

Đức Thành

Google's unspoken motto: "Our products always work; they will always work one way or another, we are just never sure which way."
Inconsistencies seem to be a part of Google, now.

mohit

Not a right place to say but now i understood that why people prefer ios than android. I am not a apple fan but i am tired of these kind of inconsistencies.

Đức Thành

Of course, it's reasonable to feel that way so don't feel bad about it. I'd still choose Android most of the time, as each platform has their own good sides and the tradeoffs and Android's (and many Google products') advantages are much more worth its tradeoffs in my opinion; however at the same time I, like everyone else, am of the opinion that there are some issues that are entirely resolvable and Google, with all their brilliant competences should have no excuse to neglect solving them.

Then again, the problems might be more complicated than it looks, so it might take more time and effort than we would expect (and have come to take for granted from Google); however I am optimistic that it's just a matter of time before things get smoothed over at Google. This could just be my wishful thinking as well, but instead of just watching, we can all work hard to make that a reality by making Google aware of their issues and help them with thinking about the solutions.

Rod

It's always downloaded by Chrome, when you download from Chrome. Android's download manager is triggered when other apps request downloads.

mohit

No it's not. Try to download some files of different extensions .Sometimes it uses chrome's download manager and sometimes Android's. I was using that feature from dev edition. I thought that will be fixed in stable release but no.

Đức Thành

Have you tried submitting a bug report?

TheSparks

What I want to know is if I can copy the download link from the download manager? The default Android download manager can't do that!

sarxion

#BringBackMergedTabsAndApps

Seriously, this is the only thing that keeps me stuck in Chrome v51 until the Chrome team agrees to bring back the option to merge tabs and apps...

Adam Margeson

I couldn't do that. I typically run with 30+ tabs. To have that much bulk in with my Apps? Insanity would ensue.